The invention relates to a fully-automatic device for removal of spot-check samples for removing pre-folded cartons or similar flat articles from a travelling endless stack in a scale-like configuration, with a predetermined precise stack quantity. The mass production of precisely-measured quantities of foodstuffs and luxury foods as well as medicines and the like requires a corresponding mass production of packaging materials, of which folded cartons form a high proportion. The quality and predictability of such folded cartons and their imprints are subject to exacting requirements. They are produced at high manufacturing speeds and in an exactly reproducible fashion on modern assembly lines using on-line technology. Folded cartons and similar paperboard articles are pre-stamped from paperboard and printed. The flat carton blanks are disposed by folding and gluing in the form of arrangements of flat cartons in an endless stack in a shingle- or scale-like configuration, and passed through various measurement and monitoring points. Spot-check samples are removed. The cartons are finally combined, packed in stacks of a specific number and dispatched.
The high production performances and demanding quality requirements made of the packaging products render necessary special monitoring systems during the manufacturing procedure, which are scarcely economically feasible by means of manual intervention in the manufacturing sequence, as this lacks technical logic, and involves the unavoidable possibility of error where monitoring personnel are involved.
In this respect, the sample removal which is regarded as particularly critical is that which is subject to specific criteria of removal which cannot be guaranteed by manual intervention by a monitoring person, and the number, precisely predeterminable to one unit, of product units packed into stacks and brought on to the market.